What we do get is Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem (first as a story a character is telling, then later as excerpts from a novel a different character had written). One of the fascinating things about this is how Bulgakov uses different, more obscure translations than we would expect; it's "Yershalaim" rather than "Jerusalem", "Yeshua Ha-Notsri" rather than "Jesus of Nazareth", and "Judas of Kerioth" rather than "Judas Iscariot." This device signals that this isn't quite the story as represented in the Gospels. Instead, it's a (plausible) accounting of a potential historical Jesus, his disciple (only one in The Master and Margarita), his betrayal, and his eventual execution. This story is interspersed with the contemporary action of the novel, that is the Prince of Darkness himself, and his retinue in 1930s/40s Moscow.
Said action entails the actions of the retinue of Professor Woland (a mysterious foreigner we meet in the first chapter, and who appears to be Satan): a man-sized cat, a fanged assassin, a freakishly tall fop, and a witch in and around Muscovite society. In short order, they take over an apartment (of a man who Woland corrects on the historicity of Jesus), organize a magic show which ends with half the audience in a state of undress, expose hypocrites, and get the one man who sees through it committed to an asylum.
Our title characters are introduced later in the narrative: we meet the Master in the asylum, when he's the neighbor of the character who's committed. We hear of Margarita through the story of his life he tells, but we don't meet her until much later in the novel.
Would recommend, as this is a variety of novels in one: that of the historical Jesus in Judea, a not-quite bildungsroman of the poet we meet early, a political satire, and a madcap adventure.
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